VPaterson

Last updated 00:00, Friday, 28 December 2007

HAPPY New Year; I hope you have a great one and that 2008 brings you all you would want from it.

2008! It’s incredible! It is nearly a decade since the new millennium when we all waited and worried to see if the world was going to end at the stroke of midnight. That was because we had been so busy inventing computers and computerising everything we used.

But we hadn’t been clever enough to realise that when we got to 2000 all those computers would think we were going backwards to 1900 and everything would collapse.

Never understood it myself, but it doesn’t matter because it didn’t happen and we all survived.

It is so easy to look backwards and forwards and worry about what the world is coming to.

Worry no more, I bring you tidings of great joy.

I have just been laughing at some topical cartoons by Britain’s beloved cartoonist, Giles.

Even the worst aspects of life are something to laugh at.

So I laughed at his take on the floods that left so many people miserable. I laughed at his view of the health service.

He showed that some politicians are probably corrupt, some are not behaving as good boys and girls should, and the government doesn’t listen to anyone.

He could even see the lighter side of the dismal failure of most of our sporting teams.

He made me laugh about declining standards, about youth disorder and all the other things that we have worried and fretted over during the past 12 months.

The only thing is, the book I was reading - one of several I bought at a recent fair - was mocking the headlines of 1987 - 20 years ago!

Now, there are two ways of looking at this.

You could bemoan the fact that things have never changed and next year will be just as bad as this and we are all doomed.

But I prefer to think that the fact that the year 1987 was so similar to 2007 that we really don’t have as much to worry about as we thought.

See! Global warming has been here for ages and it hasn’t killed us yet. Britain survived losing sporting events. The person leading the country in 1987 was Maggie Thatcher, and we managed to survive her.

So you see, the end of the world may not be nigh after all.

They were wrong in 1999 when they prepared us for the Millennium Bug and Doomsday.

During 2007 we heard that the world was on the virtual brink of collapse because of global warming.

I don’t know what 2008 will bring but I am almost willing to bet that the world will still be around in 12 months’ time.

So enjoy it!